Business Continuity Planning and "Groupthink"

We believe that many business continuity professionals would agree that one of the major points of resistance to including business continuity planning as part of a small or mid-sized organization’s strategic thinking, objectives or methodologies often comes from an inability to get upper management “on board” to support those business continuity program implementation efforts.

While this can often be enough of a challenge to overcome, we also wish to point out another dynamic which can be a danger to the business continuity planning process, but is nonetheless, also found in organizations – and, that is avoiding the dangers of “groupthink” during the business continuity planning process.

And, to address this point more specifically, our staff would like you to read a recent article, written by David Honour and posted on the ContinuityCentral website. Much of Mr. Honour’s position is supported by his assumption that business continuity planning is rooted in group decision making and is, therefore, at risk from “group think”.

In the article, David Honour states, “….Groupthink, a term coined by psychologist Irving Janis in his 1972 work ‘Victims of Groupthink’ (published by Houghton Mifflin; ISBN: 0-395-14044-7), occurs when a team makes poor decisions because of group pressures. In a typical groupthink scenario individuals fail to raise personal qualms, doubts and misgivings due to the perceived requirement to fit in with the wider group. The resulting group decisions may be inferior, and may lack ‘reality testing, and moral judgment’.